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A Man Called Hitler Runs for a Seat He May Not Fill

JENIN, West Bank, Jan. 18 - The candidate's name is Jamal Abu Roub, but everyone here calls him Hitler because, well, that is the name he has answered to quite comfortably since he was a teenager.

Mr. Roub, 40, is a leader of the militant Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in this turbulent corner of the West Bank, and has spent the past five years leading his ragtag band of gunmen in frequent clashes with the Israeli military. Mr. Roub's deeds include hauling a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel and of molesting his own daughters into a town square, where the man was shot to death.

Now Mr. Roub is a candidate for the Palestinian Parliament and is virtually assured of winning a seat in elections next Wednesday. He is wanted by Israel, and therefore does not appear at rallies, yet that seems only to have bolstered his reputation.

In an interview in Jenin, Mr. Roub said with a crooked smile that it was his first campaign appearance, and probably his last.

"I leave the campaigning to my brother and my supporters, but this is not a problem because people here know me and trust me," Mr. Roub said. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair is tousled, giving him the look of a man pursued. He chain-smokes Marlboros and gulps his coffee. His face features several days worth of stubble, and he does not look like someone who has slept in his own bed recently.

He is the rare fugitive who likes to see posters of himself. Mr. Roub and other candidates for the Fatah movement appear in campaign advertisements that vie for space among the thousands of posters plastered on every flat surface in town.

Yet his candidacy is more than an oddity involving a man with a provocative nickname and a history of violence.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is seeking to co-opt the militants who have been fighting Israel, and the election is sure to bring at least a few of them into Parliament. It is not clear how they will participate, though, since Israel has said it will not grant them immunity if they are elected.

The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is made up of members of Mr. Abbas's Fatah party, emerged soon after the latest Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

Mr. Abbas has repeatedly called on Al Aksa to lay down its weapons, but the various Al Aksa factions have largely ignored his call and have been responsible for much of the internal Palestinian chaos, like taking over government offices and election centers to demand jobs. At Mr. Abbas's urging, a large number of militants have been incorporated into the Palestinian security forces in the past year, and the Islamic faction Hamas is taking part in national elections for the first time.

Mr. Abbas hopes that these steps will persuade the militants to join his effort to restore order in the Palestinian areas and revive peace talks with Israel, but it remains far from clear whether his plan will work.

Indeed, Israelis often argue that Mr. Abbas, who came to power after the death of Yasir Arafat in 2004, is rewarding men he should be jailing.

While Palestinians generally support Mr. Abbas's effort, they tend to describe the results as mixed.

"We are in the post-Arafat era, and we can no longer be governed by the same old, impotent cardinals of Fatah," said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, a moderate who heads Passia, a Palestinian research center in Jerusalem. "Fatah is very much divided and fragmented, and Abbas is trying to bring it together."

Mr. Roub contends the election offers him a better way to continue his struggle with Israel, which has consumed his whole life.

Mr. Roub said he has always been adamant about his beliefs, so much so that when he was 16 a high school friend began calling him Hitler, and it stuck. Mr. Roub said Hitler's slaughter of the Jews was wrong, yet he seems quite willing to keep the nickname.

When Mr. Roub was leaving after an interview, a group of Palestinian women spotted him and a buzz swept through the room. "It's Hitler; it's Hitler," they said, one after another. Mr. Roub could not resist speaking to them for 15 minutes.

One of the few men present asked Mr. Roub if it was time to put guns aside.

"Some groups have misused their weapons," he said. "If it's necessary to keep them, with the agreement of the political leadership, then we will. But if it's not necessary, then we can hand them in."

In a July 2004 episode captured on camera, Mr. Roub and his Al Aksa gunmen dragged a Palestinian man into the central square of Qabatiya, Mr. Roub's hometown, a few miles south of Jenin.

The suspect was accused of collaborating with Israel and sexually abusing his own daughters, and the Al Aksa men asked the crowd what should be done. When the crowd replied, "Kill him immediately," the gunmen riddled the man with bullets.

Mr. Roub has been arrested by Israel six times, starting when he was 17, and has been imprisoned for a total of more than seven years. He also has a degree in banking, and reels off the dates of his arrests and releases with a banker's precision.

The oldest of his five children, Khaled, was born the day after Mr. Roub was arrested in 1989. Khaled, now 16, was himself detained by Israeli troops two months ago.

"I'd love to live a normal life," Mr. Roub said. "It's not my hobby to live like this. But we will not have a normal life until we have a state."

His first foray into politics was the Fatah primary election in November, and Mr. Roub drew the largest number of votes out of more than 40 candidates in the Jenin region. As a result, he was given the No. 12 position on Fatah's list of parliamentary candidates.

Fatah is expected to get at least 35 percent of the vote, the most recent polls indicate. As long as it gets at least 20 percent, Mr. Roub will make the cut for a seat in Parliament.

Actually taking his seat could be a problem, however, because Israel has its own ideas about where Mr. Roub should be sitting.

"No person involved in terrorism can use the election campaign as a way to receive immunity," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry.

As an example, Mr. Regev cited Marwan Barghouti, a hugely popular figure among young Palestinians who is at the top of the Fatah election list.

Mr. Barghouti was already a member of the Palestinian Parliament in 2002 when he was arrested by Israel and subsequently convicted of orchestrating the killings of five civilians. He is now serving five life sentences, and Mr. Regev said the election would not change his status.

During the past few years of fighting, Israeli travel restrictions have often made it impossible for Palestinian legislators in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to gather in the same place.

On several occasions, Gaza legislators met in Gaza City, while their West Bank counterparts convened in Ramallah in a session linked by videoconference.

The sessions could become even more complicated if Mr. Roub and others sought by Israel join the legislature.

Mr. Roub would risk arrest at an Israeli checkpoint if he traveled the main roads from his home area to Ramallah. Asked how he planned to reach Parliament, Mr. Roub said: "Initially, we will try to get official permission. If that doesn't happen, then we have our own ways."